


Or To Take Arms

by scrollgirl



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Character of Color, Community: satedan_grabass, Episode Related, Episode: s02e06 Trinity, Episode: s04e09 Miller's Crossing, Episode: s04e11 Be All My Sins Remember'd, Gen, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-15
Updated: 2010-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-08 23:32:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrollgirl/pseuds/scrollgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronon knew Sheppard hadn't grown up in this galaxy and that he could never truly understand how people here felt about the Wraith. But when Sheppard made a decision that put Atlantis at risk, Ronon felt he had to finally speak up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Or To Take Arms

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://jendavis.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**jendavis**](http://jendavis.dreamwidth.org/) for [](http://community.livejournal.com/satedan_grabass/profile)[](http://community.livejournal.com/satedan_grabass/)**satedan_grabass** using all three prompts: miscommunication/cultural differences, fallout from a mission gone awry, fighting/arguing with each other. I'd planned to write slash, but somehow this turned out gen. IDEK.

Ronon found Sheppard holed up in the small conference room Agent Barrett had commandeered for them when they had been chasing the paper trail to Devlin Medical Technologies. The room was dark, but light from the corridor spilled across the floor and illuminated Sheppard's hunched form sitting on the edge of the desk. Ronon froze, afraid the message Chief Harriman had left on his cell phone had been a mistake and that he'd brought Jeannie's husband and daughter to see a dead body. "Is she...?"

"No," said Sheppard, his voice hoarse, then cleared his throat and shifted slightly to look at Ronon. "No, Jeannie's fine, Rodney's with her. The nanites have been deactivated." He lifted one shoulder and let it drop again, like it was no big deal. "The Wraith came through for us."

But Sheppard's haunted expression told a different story, and after two and a half years fighting by his side Ronon didn't need someone to translate John Sheppard for him. Pretty much all he had to do was add up the facts. The Wraith had been their hostage for weeks now, starving slowly, and yet somehow he had done the impossible and saved McKay's sister. And instead of being down in the infirmary with everyone else, Sheppard was brooding alone in the dark, looking worse than when he had lost men under his command. None of that added up to anything good, and Ronon knew without needing to hear the words what Sheppard had done, knew the choice he had made without having to witness the SFs hand over a zipped body bag to a stone-faced Dr. Lam.

He fought to keep his tone even. "What happened to Wallace?"

"The Wraith got loose, just for a second." Sheppard gave a bleak laugh. "Wallace is dead."

Hearing it from Sheppard's own mouth was... obscene. Fury rose up like bile and threatened to choke him and Ronon had to move, plant his palms flat against the cold concrete wall to keep himself under control. "You sent me to the airport so I couldn't stop you."

"Ronon..." He heard Sheppard stand, take a step forward, then stop. "I had to do something. The Wraith was dying and we needed him to finish reprogramming the nanites. It would have killed McKay to lose her, and Madison's just a little kid, she needs her mom, and Kaleb..." When Ronon still refused to face him, he made a noise of frustration and pounded his fist on the desk. "I didn't have a _choice_."

"So, what, you want me to forgive you?" Ronon demanded, breathing hard through his nose, his head dropped down between his shoulders, too heavy to raise up. "You want me to say you did the right thing?"

Sheppard laughed again, a painfully bitter noise. "I couldn't let Jeannie die, I couldn't let Rodney die, I couldn't let the Wraith die. Wallace volunteered."

Ronon finally turned and looked at Sheppard head-on. Silently they held each other's gaze, neither flinching. "You keep telling yourself that," he said after a long minute, then walked out of the room.

* * *

Sheppard and Ronon gated back to Midway with their prisoner while McKay stayed behind with Jeannie and her family. Immediately upon arriving at Midway, they dialled Atlantis instead of following the 24 hour medical quarantine protocol--Ronon didn't ask, but figured Sheppard was more concerned with securing the Wraith behind a force-shield again as soon as possible than he was with Milky Way contagions.

Stepping into the gateroom in Atlantis, they were greeted by Teyla, Colonel Carter, and a team of Marines there to assist the Wraith's security guards in escorting him back to his cell.

"Where is Rodney?" Teyla asked anxiously. "Was he not successful in deactivating Jeannie's nanites?"

"Jeannie's fine," Sheppard quickly assured her. "Everything's fine. Rodney got the damn things reprogrammed and she's back to normal."

The Wraith gave him a sharp smile as he and his escort passed by. "You forget my contributions, John Sheppard. I believe I had _some_ small part in all this."

Teyla frowned at him, then gave him a second, more thorough look, and Carter did the same. After a second, they realised what had changed about the Wraith and turned simultaneous looks of horror on Sheppard.

"John..." Teyla began, her eyes wide, but Sheppard shook his head minutely and glanced at Carter.

"Colonel, the official incident report should have been sent through as we gated in," he said, with a nod up at the control room balcony. "I can give a verbal report, if you want. In your office?"

"Of course," said Carter, and gestured for Sheppard and Teyla to join her. She paused on the stairs when Ronon started after the security team. "Ronon? I'd like to hear from you as well."

Ronon clenched his jaw, his gaze trained on the spot where the Wraith had been before he'd turned the corner out of the gateroom. "I'm gonna make sure he gets back in his cell." The Marines were good, but the Wraith was at full strength, having just fed, and Ronon wasn't taking any chances. Carter nodded her understanding, which Ronon took for permission.

Sergeant Chehab, who had the rear position, acknowledged Ronon behind them with a jerk of his head. Gun in hand and set to kill, Ronon kept pace behind the security team as they marched down a corridor and two flights of stairs cleared of personnel until they reached the cargo transporter. Most transporters in Atlantis were small and designed for two or three people, for ease of pedestrian traffic through a vast city, but there were several much larger transporters designed to move cargo, and it was one such transporter they used now, spacious enough to fit the Wraith and his entire security team. It had been pre-programmed for a one-way jump from the control tower to the holding cells in the outskirts of the city.

The Wraith paid no notice to the security team removing his shackles, only stared at Ronon with his yellow eyes slitted, a knowing smirk on his monstrous face. "You do not seem very grateful for my selfless assistance," he observed, mock-injury in his tone. "Without me to reprogram the nanites, Dr. McKay's sister would surely have died."

"You got your payment," Ronon growled, the burn of anger and violation still hot in his chest. "Enjoy your strength while it lasts, _Wraith_. We don't need you to stop the Replicators." A lie, probably, but at that moment he was happy to believe it was the truth. "You're still gonna starve to death--it's just gonna take longer." He bared his teeth. "I can't wait."

The Wraith chuckled, darkly amused. "What bothers you more: that I yet live, or that Sheppard _wants_ me to live?"

Ronon kept his voice soft, deadly. "I'll kill you before I let you force Sheppard into another deal."

"Hmm, we shall see," the Wraith sing-songed, and he smiled, sharp and bright.

Not until the force-shield slammed on, a wave of light shimmering from floor to ceiling, the Wraith safely contained within his cell, did Ronon allow his body to relax very, very slightly.

* * *

Sheppard and Ronon stayed clear of each other for the next few days, despite Teyla's attempts to bridge the gap. There was nothing to say, really, when it was clear to Ronon that Sheppard felt justified in valuing a Wraith's life over a human's, even a selfish, desperate fool like Wallace, and that the SGC had been as equally willing to look the other way.

When Teyla heard McKay had returned, however, Ronon couldn't find an excuse to avoid meeting the rest of his team in the mess. He arrived in time to see McKay and Sheppard sitting down, Teyla offering fruit from her own tray. Sheppard caught his eye and froze, his ass hovering an inch above his chair.

"Ronon," Teyla called, waving to him, and Sheppard dropped his gaze and sat. Ronon nodded to her, grabbed a tray of his own, and headed over to their table.

"How is Jeannie?" Teyla was asking.

McKay's mouth twitched between a contented smile and a worried frown, settling somewhere around relieved. "She's home where she belongs, baking cookies and playing dolls with her kid like nothing ever happened. As if being kidnapped and nearly turned into a zombie by nanites were things you could just forget." He shrugged heavily. "I bought her a Prius." When Teyla seemed confused, he added, "It's a car, a hybrid. It's more environmentally friendly than the average gas-guzzling SUV."

Teyla lay a sympathetic hand on McKay's arm, saying, "It sounds like a wise investment. Children deserve clean air to breathe, don't you think?", which was apparently encouragement enough to start him rambling about Earth's ozone depletion, climate change, the endless rain in Vancouver, the numerous times he'd been exposed to radiation to date, and Kaleb's unhealthy obsession with tofu.

The team resumed its missions and things went back to normal. But despite Ronon locking down his anger for the sake of watching Sheppard's back in the field, there remained a frisson of uncomfortable tension between them, which even McKay seemed to feel. Teyla kept her own counsel.

To say that discovering that Niam's faction of Replicators had made duplicates of their team in order to study their humanity and learn how to Ascend had come as a shock was something of an understatement. None of them knew how to react at first. These doubles were exactly like them, but they _weren't_ them. Ronon got over his confusion simply by deciding he didn't like it, not any of it, end of story.

But seeing Elizabeth Weir was heartwrenching, especially as they barely had a chance to absorb her presence before she sacrificed herself a second time: when the Replicator warship attacked, she and their doubles played decoy in one puddlejumper so the rest of them could escape through the Ring in the second puddlejumper.

He tried not to feel guilty about not feeling guilty about his double's death. Teyla and McKay were both drawn and quiet, and Sheppard looked achingly defeated beneath his bland mask. It would have taken a harder heart than Ronon's to ignore him.

John blinked and stared up at him when Ronon showed up at his quarters with _Back to the Future_ on DVD.

"Wanna watch?" Ronon asked, and smiled at John's grateful nod.

* * *

Being able to track the Replicator warships gave them the opportunity to evacuate human populations before they could be annihilated. It also meant Ronon and Teyla were sent out again and again, sometimes with other teams, to try to convince sceptical farmers to abandon their crops, business owners to close up shop, and escape to a safe planet.

McKay spent his waking hours holed up in a secure lab with the Wraith, trying to find a weakness in the Replicator code that they could exploit. From the grimaces and doubtful looks Sheppard and Carter kept shooting each other, Ronon assumed things weren't going well.

The _Daedalus_ and the _Apollo_ ran guerilla attacks against the Replicators, downing seven warships in total before the Replicators wised up and fell back to their planet to regroup.

"It will not take them long to rebuild their fleet," Teyla murmured, fighting with the zipper of her tac vest. She and Ronon were heading out to Manaria with Lorne's team to help build shelters for the refugees.

"McKay will come up with something," said Ronon, bumping her shoulder on his way out.

He turned out to be right. Rodney had a breakthrough, something about a super-dense blob that Ronon didn't really understand but Carter and Zelenka appeared to, so he figured it'd be fine. It was Sheppard's plan that Ronon hated, because it involved their Wraith prisoner and it involved co-operating with him and possibly letting him go and trusting he wouldn't broadcast Atlantis' position to every Hive in the galaxy. It was a stupid plan and he suspected Sheppard might actually get it to work.

Coming out of the Ring to the blackness of space and Hive ships surrounding their puddlejumper... Even though they had been the ones to set up the meeting, Ronon couldn't help the familiar prickle of fear that had kept him alive all those years as a Runner. He had to remind himself that fear was a tool, not a weakness, and that he had survived worse odds before.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," he grumbled, even as he and Sheppard released the Wraith from his restraints.

Sheppard glanced at him. "Well, we're here. Let's see it through." Of course, right after that Wraith guards stunned them into unconsciousness.

He woke up on the floor of the jumper with Sheppard leaning over him, the Wraith hovering in the background. "You can't kill him, we have a deal," Sheppard told him abruptly, words pouring out a defence. "We've got seven Hive ships on our side--he couldn't get all twelve, but seven ships will help even the odds." He kept his body between them, as though protecting the Wraith. From _Ronon_. "Help me wake Teyla," said Sheppard, a note of pleading in his voice.

Ronon did as he was asked, but that didn't mean he was quiet about it. He _hated_ to be stunned, hated that he'd lain insensate in the jumper, easy pickings, while the Wraith had conducted negotiations without them. Knowing the Wraith had ordered Ronon stunned multiple times to keep him down just so the Wraith could talk to Sheppard alone made it worse.

It took longer to wake Teyla than it should have, and Ronon used his worry to chalk another black mark against Sheppard's pet Wraith, but it turned out to be good luck because the Ancestral warship that dropped out of hyperspace almost on top of them turned out to be the Traveller captain, Larrin.

"Better her than the Replicators, right?" said Ronon.

Sheppard shrugged, noncommittal. "Let's see what kind of mood she's in."

* * *

Dropping a bomb. It was a good expression. Descriptive. It seemed universal to societies that had developed bombs, like Earth, like Sateda. Teyla dropped the bomb on them after they got back to Atlantis. Ronon had known for some time that she and Kanaan were together, but with everything that had happened since the Athosians went missing, he had put it out of his mind.

Sheppard hadn't even known Teyla was seeing someone--but then, he hadn't visited New Athos as much as he'd used to visit the mainland of their old planet. Ronon watched as Sheppard made a jackass of himself, taking Teyla off active duty and turning away from her as though she had offered him insult. It was typical John, overreacting in fear, pushing others away, imposing Earth rules without asking what Teyla and Ronon thought.

"He'll come around," he promised, walking hand-in-hand with Teyla to the infirmary. Sheppard would come around even if it meant Ronon kicking his ass from one end of the city to the other.

"I suspected he would be angry when I finally told him," Teyla sighed. "His military forbids pregnant women to go into combat." She looked up at him, her brow furrowed. "How would the Satedan military have handled my situation?"

"About the same," Ronon admitted, ruefully. "Protocol said pregnant women could serve in combat as long as they signed a form saying they didn't hold the military responsible if the baby died or had problems. In practice, you would have been... _encouraged_ to find a posting away from the battlefield."

Hearing this, Teyla was quiet for a moment. "I understand," she finally said. "But it is different for my people. We are not soldiers, Ronon. We do not have different rules for pregnant women simply because we know--it is a fact of life--that danger comes whether we are asleep in our tents, or trading off-world, or working the fields, or hunting in the forests. The Wraith always come, whether a woman is pregnant or not."

There would be time later for Ronon to gently point out that going off-world to trade was a far cry from infiltrating Wraith strongholds and battling the Replicators. Sheppard might have been a jackass about it, but Ronon didn't actually think his rules were wrong. It should have been Teyla's decision, but it was still only common sense that her child would be more likely to survive if she stayed out of combat situations.

Ronon caught Sheppard before he beamed up to Larrin's ship and clasped his shoulder. "Don't get blown up, okay?" Sheppard scowled and glanced past him to where Teyla stood, saying good-bye to McKay. "Did you talk to her?"

"_Yes_," John huffed, and looked away before Teyla noticed him. "You guys be careful down on the planet. Keep McKay honest. If it's not going to work, grab him and get the hell out. That's an order."

Ronon had no a problem with that.

Later, in the core room of the Asuran city, feeling the ground heave and roll beneath his feet, Ronon watched out for Replicators with one eye and McKay with the other. Two and a half years of serving on the same team had given him a pretty good sense of when McKay was bluffing about being right, when he was absolutely confident he was right, and when he was lit up from within by genius. Fortunately he got genius Carter _and_ genius McKay, so he started breathing easy and wasn't surprised when they managed to get the planet blown up right on schedule after all.

"Nice job," he told McKay, grinning, and smacked him on the back.

* * *

The team met up for a late dinner in the mess after Sheppard got back from Larrin's ship. "You must tell me about the mission," Teyla said to Rodney, and if shifting her seat to give McKay full attention meant Sheppard saw more of her back than her face, it must have been a coincidence.

"I thought you talked to her," Ronon muttered under his breath. Sheppard made a face.

Adrenaline crashing, they zoned out on McKay explaining how he destroyed the Replicator homeworld, more than happy to let him enjoy the moment as long as they weren't expected to contribute to the story. Carter and Keller wandered by after a while and were invited to sit, and Teyla asked Carter for her perspective. Zelenka, then Lorne and his team joined them, as well as a few scientists grabbing snacks before bed, and soon they had a small crowd eagerly listening.

Two months of knowing the Replicators were out in the galaxy because of changes they had made to their base code, that they'd made it possible for the Replicators to massacre tens of thousands of human beings... Today had been a victory and they deserved to celebrate, and eat, and tell stories. Ronon could see it in Carter's eyes. In Sheppard's and Teyla's too. This was good for morale.

Sheppard stifled a yawn, and Ronon tilted his chin at the door. Patting Rodney on the back one last time, Ronon followed Sheppard out into the empty corridor. "It's late," he said, giving Sheppard an out, but he shook his head.

"Not that late. C'mon, let's spar." But when they passed the gym, they didn't go in, just followed the corridor further along until it opened up onto a terrace. Sheppard leaned against the railing and looked out across the city. "You're quieter than usual."

Ronon shrugged, lifting his face up at the night sky. "Long day."

"Oh." Frowning, Sheppard rocked back on his heels and turned. "You wanna head back?"

But this conversation had been a long time coming--Ronon didn't want to keep putting it off. "That Wraith is out there now," he said, low and serious, and watched as Sheppard grew very still, every line of his body tight with tension. "He knows where Atlantis is, and all you have is his word."

"He didn't expose us before, when he had the chance," Sheppard pointed out, his tone light and at odds with his white knuckles on the railing. "He's found us useful enough to work with us, and there's no gain in his telling other Wraith factions where we are."

"You don't know that!" Ronon burst out, furious with Sheppard's naiveté. "You're trusting a _Wraith_ to keep Atlantis a secret. A _Wraith_."

Sheppard faced him, looking dog-tired with bags under his eyes. "What choice did I have? We needed his ships to stop the Replicators."

"And what about Wallace?" Sheppard jerked in surprise, eyes widening, and Ronon stared him down with old, cold anger. "You handed over a human being so he could _feed_."

Looking ill, Sheppard took an instinctive step backwards. "Ronon..."

"Teyla and I went to Belkan, a couple of months after I first came to Atlantis," he said suddenly, needing Sheppard to understand. "I learned from Teyla's contact that I wasn't the only Satedan to survive. I found a friend from my regiment, Solen Sincha, and he told me that three hundred more Satedans had made it through the culling. One of them--Kell. He was my task master during my training." He paused. "Did Teyla tell you about him?"

"I don't think so. Just that there were more Satedans who had survived."

"Kell betrayed the soldiers under his command," he continued, meeting Sheppard's wary gaze. "When the culling began, he ordered them to their deaths so he could escape through the Ring." He waited until Sheppard nodded, lips pressed in a thin line, then pushed on to the end. "When I found out he was alive, I had Teyla set up a meeting. Didn't tell her why. I waited until Kell was through the door, and then I killed him."

"You... killed him." Sheppard repeated the words like he wasn't sure of their meaning, clearly rocked by Ronon's confession. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Teyla said we had to keep it a secret," Ronon growled, remembering the old hatred and betrayal, the fierce satisfaction he'd felt standing over Kell's dead body. "She said that you wouldn't understand why I had to kill him. That you had different ways of doing things. She was right."

Pale and subdued, Sheppard nodded vaguely. "Yeah, well, Teyla usually is." His gaze drifted out over the terrace edge. "I should..." He waved a hand at door.

"Sure," said Ronon, and didn't stop him from going.

* * *

He was at Sheppard's door early the next morning, having spent the night picking apart their conversation and coming to the realisation that Sheppard hadn't understood, not really. To be fair to him, Ronon had ended up talking around the problem instead of attacking it straight on, and Sheppard didn't have the right context.

"Can I come in?" he asked when the door slid open. Still half asleep, Sheppard just waved him in, but as Ronon paced the small room he could see Sheppard quickly becoming more alert, growing stiff and uneasy. "Sorry to wake you up," Ronon offered, trying to be nice.

"I was up," said Sheppard, which was pretty much a bald-faced lie. He sat down on his rumpled bed, his shoulders hunched. "I'm gonna guess you're not here because you want to go running."

Glaring at Sheppard didn't get his message across since he wasn't even looking in Ronon's direction, but it made Ronon feel better. "You're an idiot and you don't give yourself enough credit," he said flatly.

Sheppard snorted. "I think you just contradicted yourself."

An idiot _and_ a pain in the ass. Ronon settled for glaring harder. "Why do you think I told you about Kell yesterday?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Sheppard, recklessly casual. "A warning, maybe, to keep me honest. So I never get as bad as him."

Yeah, that was pretty much what Ronon figured. "No, John," he said, annoyed. "That's not why, and you're an idiot because you don't give yourself enough credit." When Sheppard darted a glance at him, frowning, Ronon held his gaze and said forcefully, trying to get it through his thick skull: "_You are nothing like Kell._" Sheppard flinched, but it was simple instinct to shy away from this kind of emotional intensity and so Ronon let it slide. "Look, I might be pissed at you for trusting that Wraith of yours, but don't compare yourself to Kell. You understand honour--Kell never did."

Sheppard finally let his shoulders drop to a more comfortable level, the doubt in his eyes fading. "But you _are_ pissed about Wallace."

"Yeeaah," Ronon drew out, "but not because you talked Wallace into committing suicide. I can live with that, since he's the one who kidnapped Jeannie and injected her with nanites."

"Then what?" asked Sheppard, spreading his hands.

Sighing, Ronon lowered himself to the floor, leaning back against the drawers and stretching his legs out. He gave himself space to find the right words so that Sheppard would understand. "I don't know how to accept the way you talk to them. The Wraith. You _negotiate_ with them, like they're capable of listening to you, and even changing their minds. Almost like they were... people."

"They're not great at listening, yeah," Sheppard nodded. "But I think Todd has proved they're capable of it, if you have something they actually want to hear."

Ronon gritted his teeth. "And you keep _naming them_."

But Sheppard only smirked, shaking his head. "That's different. Naming something--in a lot of Earth cultures, it's a way of claiming it, showing ownership. It's about power. I'm defining him, using a word that has meaning to me, not him."

It made a strange kind of sense, the way he explained it, though Ronon didn't think it was the whole answer. Not when the Wraith--when Todd claimed Sheppard as his brother.

"I told you about Kell to explain what the Wraith are to Teyla and me--to those of us born under the Wraith. We're cattle to them, herd animals left to forage and breed. The Wraith aren't _people_ to us. They're ravagers, a faceless horde. A dart. A Hive ship. Begging for your life is pointless. You either run and hide, or you fight and die."

"Or you become a Wraith worshipper." Sheppard nodded slowly, beginning to see. "Align yourself with the Wraith, when they aren't even people, aren't even capable of the slightest humanity... And Kell used his soldiers as fodder, didn't he? Fodder for the Wraith." He dropped his chin onto his chest to stare blankly at the floor.

Ronon nudged a bare foot with his knee. "It's not the same," he told him, "what happened with Wallace. You let him die with some measure of honour to save Jeannie's life. It's not the same thing." They sat in silence for a while, each giving the other space to think, Ronon thumbing through a comic he found under the bed and John flopped on his back, drifting.

"You know we'll probably have to deal with the Wraith again at some point, right?" Sheppard asked after a while, idly, as though he didn't really need to hear Ronon's answer.

He tossed the comic onto the bed and rose gracefully to his feet. With Sheppard, he liked the little things best--like showing off his sense of balance, hands never touching furniture, nothing to help him up.

"I hate you," Sheppard groused, eyeing him from the bed.

Ronon shrugged. "I can live with that."

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and concrit are welcome! If you prefer, you can also leave [feedback on Dreamwidth](http://scrollgirl.dreamwidth.org/683042.html).


End file.
